Pigtails

After three long years, Ashlyn finally has enough hair to put into pigtails. She was so excited when I told her what I was doing to her hair. But by the end of the day, she was no longer excited about it. Not sure if it's because they were bothering her or if she just didn't like the attention.

Ashlyn

Our cute little Ashlyn is now three. She had been telling people for months that it was almost her birthday. Thankfully 90 days and 10 days is all the same to her. It didn't seem to matter that her birthday was months away when she'd ask, she was simply excited that her birthday was coming up.

She chose pizza for her birthday dinner.

And Aurora for her birthday cake.

Some of the things we love about Ashlyn:

She loves Barbies. Rapunzel is one of her favorites, but she calls her Re-pun-punzel. She also really likes Ariel and Sleeping Beauty. Her favorite color has been pink for a long time but she has recently added purple to the favorite list too. She looks forward to going to aerobics in the mornings so that she can play with her best friend, Asia. She also likes to run errands with me and is constantly asking how many more stores we need to go to. She's disappointed when we're done and always tries to convince me to go to one or two more before heading home. She also loves her cousins but is often confused and calls them her friends instead of cousins and tells us that she's going to marry them (boys and girls alike). She has such beautiful big blue eyes, but they disappear every time she smiles into squinty little lines, especially when you're asking her to smile for a picture. She loves her baby sister, Emmalyn, and is usually in her face until Emma screams or hits her. She is also very independent, insisting she can do everything by herself including what her big sisters do. She's constantly telling us she loves us and insists on repeating it until you repeat it back to her. In the car, she loves to say, "Mom, mom..." until I look and ask, "What?" Then she says, "I love you." and giggles. I've started doing the same to her and it's our fun little game. Last of all, she loves to sing and can actually hold a decent tune for her age. But my favorite is when she sings at the top of her lungs. She's kind of hard to understand and her singing is no longer in tune, but she loves doing it.

Discovery Recital

Sadie had her Discovery recital tonight and did a wonderful job. The kindergartners got to dress up in their Sunday best and sing The Echo Song. It's always so fun to see them on stage.

St. Patrick's Day

Once again, a little leprechaun visited our house and brought some fun goodies for the girls. This year it was chocolate coins, green hair, nail polish, Golden Grahams, and the movie Hercules. Don't mind the bed hair in this picture. Thankfully Emma doesn't have any hair yet.

Since St. Patrick's Day fell on a Sunday this year, we had to find some way to incorporate green into their Sunday dresses. Cindy made my girls these super cute green dresses a couple of years ago and it just so happened that Kali's fit Sadie and Sadie's fit Ashlyn. But even better, Cindy gave me one that no longer fit one of her girls and it now fits Kali. The only one left out of the matching was Emma, but we still found a way to dress her in green and she looked just as cute.

Real Salt Lake Soccer Game

We had the chance to go to a Real soccer game today. Unfortunately, Sadie started throwing up the night before so I stayed home with her and Emma while Josh, Kali and Ashlyn went to the game. Grandma got to go too which made it all the more fun for the girls. Josh said she kept them entertained with snow cones, nachos and cotton candy. They loved it! Oh, and the game was good too.

Treadmill

Out with the old and in with the new. The treadmill that my in-laws lent me five years ago finally died. I don't know what I would have done without it over the last several years. I think it probably didn't get used only five weeks out of the time we had it at our house. And most weeks it was used three or four times. So it was a pretty trusty machine, but it had been sounding pretty bad for quite some time. It started making really loud noises a little over a year ago. Then it suddenly stopped. Then I realized that the track would no longer stay in the center unless I ran on a slight angle. Since it's a little difficult to do that, it started tearing on the right side. Then I realized that it wasn't clocking my time and distance correctly. I could only get in about five miles an hour on it where I would get in six miles an hour running outside. Then the console started eating the batteries in a matter of days. And just a couple of weeks ago, it finally stopped in the middle of my workout. I was sad because I knew we'd have to fork over the money to get a new one, but at the same time, I was really excited to get a new one. And as you can see, I wasted no time and got me a Proform 850T for a pretty good deal. I didn't, however, make sure it would fit in our back room. After pretty much disassembling the thing, removing two doors in our house, and putting several scratch marks in the walls, we managed to maneuver it back there. Note to self for future reference: make sure the dimensions will work for your house before buying a new treadmill. Josh said if we ever sell the house, the treadmill is going with it.

Disney On Ice

We had the treat of attending Disney on Ice tonight and it was sensational. I always wanted to see it and figured now was the perfect time. With four princess crazy girls, we were able to make a family event of it. After it was over, everyone agreed that the best part was watching Rapunzel and Flynn Rider fly and spin in the air using the yellow curtains. It was pretty cool.

My favorite part was that Katie was able to get us Rocky Mountain Power's suite for our viewing pleasure. It made it so much more enjoyable, especially with a tired baby.

Emmalyn

Our precious Emma has turned 1 year old. It's hard to believe because she's still so tiny and just started crawling last week. Her birthday was a little different because Josh had scouts, but she didn't know any better and probably enjoyed it even more having it dragged out over a few days.

We started the celebration with the Smith side of the family on Sunday. I made pudding poke cupcakes and we let her have at one. She loved it! As a matter of fact, every time we glanced away, she stole another one. I think she ended up eating three cupcakes all by herself and would have had more had we let her. She's a girl after my own heart. She also put on a show while eating because she heard music playing on Grandpa's iPad. So she starting moving her shoulders to the beat while smiling and shoving cake in her mouth. It was pretty cute.

Then on Monday, we invited Grandma and Grandpa Bohman over and had her official birthday cake. After the previous night, she knew what was in front of her and wanted it badly. We were doing all we could to get a picture of her near the cake without having her grab handfuls of it. She was in tears until we distracted her with the smarties on the table. The sunshine cake was Josh's idea and thankfully turned out cute. I was just excited to put the mini M&M's on it because Emmalyn had eaten some on Valentine's Day and loved them.

On her real birthday, we let her open her presents. I guess I should say we let the other girls open presents for her. They were almost more excited than she was. Since Josh had scouts in the evening we didn't do much else, but I made sure to have some play time with her and tried to make her day exciting.

Our special little Emmalyn has been such a joy in our lives. We love her cute little personality. My personal favorite is when she blows us kisses, but everything about her makes us smile.

The State Capitol

Right now Josh is helping his scouts work on their citizenship in the nation merit badge. Well, one of the things he planned on doing was taking them on a tour of the State Capitol. Before doing so, he wanted to run through it himself, so we decided to go there as a family.On our drive there, Sadie kept telling us that she couldn't wait to see what it looked like. I was afraid she was going to be disappointed, so I wasn't very surprised when the first thing she said when she saw the Capitol was that it didn't look like she thought it would. I was, however, surprised that the second thing out of her mouth was that she thought the top would be square, not round. I was also very relieved that that seemed to be the only problem with the exterior, but I was still nervous that they were going to think the rest of the experience was pretty boring.

Again, to my surprise, they seemed to love it. I did too. The only time I had been in the Capitol was when I was at Junior Prom in high school. We got to see some pretty cool stuff.

And Josh was in his element. I think that's what made it so exciting for the girls. His excitement just rubbed off on them. When we left, Josh asked what their favorite parts were. Kali said it was the murals on the inside of the rotunda. Sadie said it was the stairs and the beehives. And Ashlyn said the beehives too. Josh pointed a couple of them out to the girls in the beginning and told them that they were all over in the capitol. Then when Ashlyn found them on her own, she got so excited. She'll probably never forget what a beehive is.

Spotlight

A couple of weeks ago, I was stopped by Sadie's teacher when picking her up from school. She told me that she wished she had 52 Sadies (she teaches two classes of 26 students), and then proceeded to tell me what a good student she was. Then a few days ago, I got an email from her saying the following:

Every week a different teacher at Entheos has a student

spotlight and this week I have the chance to do it. I

would like to spotlight my Super Student, Sadie.

Josh and I were invited to attend the teacher circle-up where she would be spotlighted. Ms. Emily explained how she and Ms. Maria knew right away that out of all 52 students, they wanted to spotlight Sadie. She then proceeded to share how well Sadie adheres to the ABCD rules of Enthoes Academy. Always follow directions. Be on task. Care for others. And Do you personal best. She also gave examples of how she does this. We are so proud of Sadie and the amazing student she is and obviously we aren't the only ones.